by Jeannie Lin
This wasn’t the same electrical cell Lord Sagara had created. It was something new.
I searched Chang-wei’s expression and knew the answer. What one man could do, another could do. He’d lain in bed for the last part of the journey, but he wasn’t resting.
“An army,” Yizhu murmured, thoroughly enthralled.
“Unlike the world has ever seen, Imperial Majesty.”
Chang-wei bowed his head low, but his tone was anything but humble. He was learning how to appeal to an empire’s vanity. My own heart pounded as I stared at the war masks on the scroll. Were there meant to be soldiers inside the armored suits? Or were they all intended to be automatons, built solely for the purpose of destruction?
Karakuri warriors in a clockwork army. A war of blood and smoke and sharp metal gears.
The entire council had fallen silent. This time when Yizhu nodded, they all murmured and nodded in kind.
A weight settled on my chest, and it grew heavier with each breath. Part of me knew this is what we needed, but the other half of my soul recalled the cautionary tales my father had taught me. A million souls had poured their blood and sweat into the ground to build our Grand Canal. The bones of laborers were ground into the mortar that held the Great Wall together. I had thought these were merely tales about tyrants of the past, seduced by power, but I was wrong.
I understood what this clockwork army would cost. Factories erected in the provinces, black smoke filling the air, increased labor conscripts. Not just men and women, but children as well.
“You have done well, Engineer Chen.” Despite his words, the Emperor did not appear pleased. “These advancements will suit our new course perfectly.”
“Forgive this lowly servant for being away from court for so long. What new course does the Son of Heaven speak of?”
“We have stayed quiet for too long. Our enemies take this for weakness.” His voice broke. “The rebels have taken Shanghai.”
Chang-wei stiffened beside me, and my breath caught. How had the imperial reinforcements fallen so quickly? Yizhu’s hard demeanor wavered, and for a moment he was a just young man, only a year older than myself, with an empire on his thin shoulders. Broken and worn to the bone. A moment later, his youth faded away, and he was Emperor once more.
“We are the children of the dragon,” he declared with his jaw locked tight. “The greatest empire under Heaven. It is time for us to show our strength.”
The Grand Council all nodded in agreement. All except the Emperor’s brother, who kept his head bowed.
“No more diplomacy. No more appeasement,” Yizhu declared with a curl of his lip. “From this moment on, we are at war.”
War.
Our empire wasn’t yet ready for this. Emperor Yizhu had always planned to fight back, but not for years. The Yangguizi still occupied our ports. Their steamships barricaded our harbors. I glanced at Chang-wei, who kept his expression impassive as he stared ahead.
“First we take back our cities from these filthy rebels,” Emperor Yizhu continued, his voice stronger than I’d ever heard it. As if he were addressing the entire empire rather a small, enclosed room of his closest advisors. “Then we drive out the barbarians. And we do not stop. We do not rest until all our enemies have been destroyed.”
* * *
I left the Forbidden City the same way I had come. Without fanfare, with Chang-wei at my side. Some people were not meant to be celebrated as heroes. Some people preferred it that way.
He reached out to help me into the carriage. My few belongings had been carefully packed into chests. I had found them that way when I’d returned to my room in the Court of Physicians. The linens had been stripped from the bed, the curtains removed.
I had asked for a reassignment, hadn’t I? Sometimes petitions within the imperial palace took months to be fulfilled. Sometimes things happened quickly. I wasn’t certain this was a good thing.
We sat side by side while the attendants loaded the transport. I held an imperial decree in my hands, folded and sealed with the Emperor’s chop. It had been laid across my worktable in the apothecary. Chang-wei had a similar yellow notice laid across his lap. Also unopened.
“The Emperor wants war,” Chang-wei said, his tone somber.
I turned the decree around in my hands. The crisp edges pressed into my palm. “The Son of Heaven’s will is our will.”
“We’re not ready.”
When was one ever ready for war? “The Emperor seems to have come to his decision quickly,” I conceded. “But perhaps a show of strength is not a bad approach.”
“This is more than a show of force,” Chang-wei said, scowling. “And we have two enemies to fight. The foreigners and the rebel army.”
Three. Three enemies, I wanted to say. After what the imperial court had done to Chang-wei, I couldn’t trust them anymore. I would continue to follow orders for the sake of unity, but there would be a time we would need to defy imperial command in order to preserve the empire. It was inevitable, and we needed to be prepared.
I leaned forward to slide the beads of the abacus control board to the coordinates for my mother’s home. The carriage would go there first before returning to Chang-wei’s residence.
As I sat back, the gears and rotors whirred to life, turning the wheels to propel us. The palace gates rolled by with the guardsmen standing aside.
Soon we were in the capital city. The Peking that most people knew of. Rickshaw drivers lounged at the corners, seeking out their next fare. Vendor carts packed the lanes, filling the air with the smell of hot grease and spices.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
He looked down at his yellow envelope. “That depends on what’s in here.”
Tension knotted my shoulders. I hadn’t dared to look at mine yet, and neither had Chang-wei. The two decrees could send us to opposite sides of the empire.
We had returned from Nagasaki to a court already in motion. In the bureaucracy of the imperial palace, everything moved at a snail’s pace unless the Emperor asserted his divine right. Yizhu was all but claiming that Heaven wanted this war. Our ancestors wanted this war.
“Together?” I proposed.
Chang-wei held his notice up beside mine. “No matter what it says in here, I meant what I told you, Soling. When I think of the future, I see myself with you. Only with you. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow or the next day, but we will be together. Some day.”
I nodded, my heart in my throat. I couldn’t trust myself to say anything at the moment. I hoped what he saw in my eyes was enough.
We broke the seals in unison. For a moment, only the sound of tearing paper filled the carriage. I held my breath as I unfolded the decree.
For a full minute, I did nothing but stare at the contents, assuring myself that the same two characters appeared on both of our assignments. Chang-wei’s fingers twined through mine as the carriage rolled on. His touch was warm.
There had been no time to talk about what was to become of us. We hadn’t kissed again, either, but every glance and slightest brush had become in some way a kiss. That one precious moment between us, held on to and drawn out. Whatever happened in the days to come, I knew Chang-wei would be there.
It wasn’t fate. It was fate that we would make happen.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing this book was like going to a Vegas buffet where you get to pick and choose all your favorite things and put them all on the same plate: Asiana, history, science, romance, and a whole lot of general geekery. Once again, I have to thank my agent Gail Fortune, who was behind this concept from the moment it was hatched. Thank you to my editors Cindy Hwang and Kristen Swartz for your continued support on and off the page.
As this was my first major foray into a Japanese setting, the Authors of Asian novels group really came through for me. To the AoAN, I can’t thank you enough
for your inspiration, guidance and support on Clockwork Samurai as well as for the teaser short story, “The Warlord and the Nightingale.”
To the Doomed Foursome—thank you for all of your support and late night/early morning chats. You keep me going, you really do.
And finally to Dayna Rowan, who once again saved my butt, saved the opening chapters, saved the world—at least my steampunk world: I couldn’t have done this without you. I send to you the biggest hug these little arms can manage.
Keep reading for an excerpt from the GUNPOWDER CHRONICLES, available now from InterMix.
I felt heat rising up the back of my neck as I walked past the center of the market area. Past all the places where any respectable young woman would be found. Everyone knew what lay at the end of the alleyway. We liked to think that because it was at the edge of our village, that dark little room was hidden. A secret thing. If no one spoke of it, it didn’t exist.
By the same rule, everyone knew there was only one reason anyone went out there.
Though there were no eyes on me, I could feel them all the same. Linhua was small enough that there were no secrets. It was small enough that people didn’t even pretend not to know.
The back door was buried deep at the end of the lane. As far as I knew, no one ever used the front entrance. I knocked twice and stepped back. After a pause, the door slid open, the corner grating against the dirt floor. The man who stood behind it gave me a wide grin. “Ah, Miss Jin Soling.”
A sickly sweet smell wafted into the alleyway. Though faint, the pungent floral notes were unmistakable. Our village wasn’t large enough to have a grain store, yet we had an opium den.
“Shang,” I greeted.
Cui Shang was thin, long in the face. I knew he was ten years older than me and his father was a widower. Once, a generation before, their family had worked a plot of farmland, but now the Cui family had no other trade besides opium.
“Are you here to try a pipe with me, Miss Jin? It will take away all your burdens; remove that worry line always hanging over your brow. You might even be pretty without it.”
I held out my palm to display the two copper coins, half of my earnings from Physician Lo that day.
“I have this week’s payment.”
“That’s not enough,” he said.
“This is how much it always costs.”
Shang scratched the side of his neck with one bony finger. “Don’t you know? The runners have raised their prices. News is there was a fire in the docks in Canton. Several large shipments of opium were destroyed.”
“I haven’t heard anything of it.”
He shrugged. “It’s the truth.”
I kept my face a mask. He was trying to play me like an old fishwife in the market. “This is all you’ll receive.”
Shang tried to stare me down, his lip curling into a scowl. Straightening my shoulders, I stared right back even though my pulse was racing. I was taller than most of the other girls in the village, but at my full height he was still half a head taller. Though constant opium use left him gaunt in appearance, he was still stronger than me.
I had my needle gun in my pocket, a spring-loaded weapon I kept with me when I had to travel on the lonely roads that surrounded the village to tend to patients. If Shang tried anything, all it would take was a single dart in his neck or torso to immobilize him, but I couldn’t draw with him so close.
With a shrug, he disappeared into the den while I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. It had been a long day. Old Lo had sent me far out to the edge of the rice fields for the monthly visit to farming huts. Now it was late and my family would be holding our evening meal to wait for me.
Ten minutes passed by and he had not yet reappeared. I loathed to go inside, but I was prepared to do so when he finally emerged.
“I had to give you a smaller amount,” he announced with even less of an attempt at politeness than before. “You can’t expect any special treatment, acting so superior all the time.”
Without argument, I held out the cash, which he took after thrusting the packet into my hand. Inside was a pressed cake of black opium. I slipped it into the pocket of my jacket and didn’t bother to say farewell before turning to leave.
“Manchu witch.”
He spat on the ground behind me. My face burned at the insult, but I didn’t stop. I hated knowing that in a week I would be back.
By the time I reached our home, I was still livid. We lived in a small village, and the walk wasn’t nearly long or strenuous enough for me to forget.
My family stayed in three small rooms surrounding a patch of dirt where we attempted to grow vegetables. I hesitated to call it a courtyard. The moment I set foot inside the front gate, the scent of cooking rice floated from the kitchen. I also heard a wail coming from one of the sleeping chambers: “Soling, Soling, Soling . . .”
Each call of my name pierced into me a little bit less. I went to the kitchen even though the cries grew louder.
Our maidservant Nan was at the stove, stirring a pot of congee for our evening meal. My eight-year-old brother Tian had his head bent over a notebook at the table. The flicker of an oil lamp illuminated the pages.
“I am sorry I’m late,” I told them.
“No, no need to be sorry,” Nan soothed. “Everything is still hot. Come sit.”
The old maidservant had been with us in Peking. She’d stayed with Mother and me when we’d relocated to Hunan province. There had been other servants with us then, though they had gradually drifted away. We could no longer support other servants besides Nan. By now, she was family.
Tian closed his notebook and laid it onto his lap as soon as I sat down. The third chair remained empty.
“How was school today?”
“Good,” Tian mumbled.
From the sleeping chamber came another cry. “Soling!”
I pushed on. “What did you study?”
“We practiced calligraphy.”
Tian played along admirably, though he kept his head down as he spoke. Nan ladled rice porridge into two clay bowls and set them before us. I picked up my spoon but set it down when I heard my name again, this time accompanied by a low moan.
“Go to her,” I said quietly.
Nan nodded and I slipped the cake of opium from my pocket into her hands before she left. Tian spooned the watery rice porridge into his mouth even though it hadn’t been seasoned yet.
It had been less than a day since we ran out of our supply. Nan had prepared a pipe for Mother last night before she had gone to bed. When there was none in the morning, she refused to eat or even drink. She claimed she was too sick to keep food in her stomach and had gone to bed.
We had gone without opium for almost two days once. I had tearfully begged Mother to stop, and she had even more tearfully agreed. After ten hours, she started crying that her skin was alive, that it was being torn away. I don’t remember who broke first, me or her.
And now Mother was getting worse. I tried to deny it, but she was getting worse.
I stood to finish setting the table myself. Nan had prepared a plate of fried bean curd, sliced thin so the portion would stretch further. There was also a tiny dish of salt and pickled vegetables from our cellar.
Only when I was near the stove did I notice the bruise on my brother’s cheek, on the side he’d kept painstakingly turned toward the wall. I sat down again. Using my chopsticks, I picked up slices of bean curd to drop into his bowl.
“You need to eat more, Tian. And stop getting into so many fights,” I reprimanded.
He bent his head lower. I knew it wasn’t his fault, but I scolded him anyway. So he could at least save face.
My brother wasn’t weak. He was just too quiet, too serious. He was different. Our family was different. When we came to Linhua village, the rumors were already circling, most of them true. We wer
e from Peking, exiled, disgraced Manchurian aristocracy among Han villagers. No matter how long we lived here, that was all we would ever be.
“Will you look at my drawings, Soling?” Tian asked once he was finished with his bowl.
“Show them to me.”
I tried to be kind to him now after scolding him earlier. An uneasy peace had descended over the house. No more cries came from the sleeping chamber, but Nan hadn’t yet returned.
I stacked the bowls beside the wash bin while Tian retrieved his books. He sat down and opened his notebook, turning the pages carefully by one corner.
A pang of emotion took me by surprise. My brother hadn’t even been one year old when we lost our father, yet there was so much of Father in him. In the way he bent his head over the page and the deliberate, thoughtful way he touched the world around him. Tian would pick up stones and turn them over and over, before setting them back down exactly as he’d found them.
Tian had hardly known Father’s expressions, yet whenever my brother bent over his sketches or his lessons, there was the same wrinkle across his forehead. The same look in his eyes with a crease in the corner as if his mind were a thousand li away.
The drawing showed a crane by the water with wings partially unfolded. I moved my chair to get a closer look. It wasn’t a pretty picture, nor one infused with majesty or emotion. My brother’s sketches were studies in structure; of shapes and their joinings.
“Very good.”
He was old enough to wear his hair braided into the queue required of all male subjects of the Qing Empire. I tried to touch a hand to the nape of his neck, a gesture that Tian seemed to hate lately. He gave an impatient shrug and I withdrew, trying not to feel hurt.
While Tian continued to work on his sketch at the table, I finished clearing away the rest of the dishes, making sure to leave enough food warming for Nan. She usually ate by herself once we were done. For some reason, it was important for her to maintain that faint boundary between master and servant.